Tuesday, December 31, 2013

I had a pretty good year in regards to finding books I loved. However, every rose has its thorn. In 365 days and 81 books, 10 of those thorns insulted, outraged, and disgusted me enough to merit a C- grade or lower. With the year drawing to a close, it's time to bring these books to justice and go all Judge Judy on them for their Crimes Against Literature.

Verdict: This story collection is a pretty mixed bag of gross, inexplicable and pretentious nonsense. Two or three stories are actually good, but the rest are so ugly or difficult to understand that it's not worth purchasing the collection. I sentence this anthology to being turned into a pig and eaten alive by convicted murderers turned into dogs, as seen in the "Justice" story in this collection.

Charged With: Criminally Stupid Worldbuilding, Overuse of Violence Against Women as a Plot Point, Improper Use of Werewolves, Failure to Explain Ending, Assault with a Poorly-Written Split Personality.

Verdict: Pearce's modern adaptation of The Little Mermaid started off decently enough, until it reached the halfway point and jumped off the Crazy Cliff to smash against the rocks of Terrible Ideas. Like how being internally conflicted and indecisive automatically means you have an alternate personality who wants to murder you. Or how mermaids eventually turn into soul-stealing, twin-eating werewolves because science. Oh, and thanks for yet another violent story where the exploited and kidnapped victims are exclusively women. Awesome. I sentence this novel to sleep with the fishes.

Verdict: Altered is, by far, one of the silliest reads of the year. Our dim bulb heroine spends her days cooing at the hot, drugged-up teenage boys her scientist dad keeps caged in his basement, obliviously content with their confinement, until they escape to find out who they really are - and only the heroine can decode the clues they have tattooed on their abs. I'm dead serious. I sentence this novel to take a cold shower and pass a university-level course on bioethics.

Verdict: My regular readers know I adore Sherry Thomas' romances, so it surprised the hell out of me that The Burning Sky, her first fantasy-YA effort, was such a weak and contrived mess. Combine a stereotypical Mary Sue heroine who is perfect at everything (including cricket on the first try!), a poorly-established and overly-convenient magical system, derivative worldbuilding, plus repetitive plotting and you have a read that is stultifying and irritating by turns. I sentence this novel to three years reading Tamora Pierce - that's how you do cross-dressing other-world fantasy!

Charged With: Assault with a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Unlawful Use of a Gary Stu, Reckless and Erratic Tone, Misrepresentation of Mental Illness, Improper Use of Ghost Narrator.

Verdict: This book was one crazy hot mess - I could never determine whether it was a disgustingly inappropriate Middle Grade book or an annoyingly immature Young Adult book. The tone varies wildly from infantile set-pieces to torture dungeons, leaving plenty of room to introduce a cheap Token Gay Character for sympathy, a Mentally Ill Character to heal with the Power of Love, and a Pedophile Character for laughs (yes, it's funny when the local police officer's in love with the 15-year-old heroine!). I sentence this novel to several weeks of in-depth psychological therapy and to enrol in sensitivity training on how to properly represent Women, Gay People, People Struggling with Depression, Repressed German Ghosts, and Pederasts.

Charged With: Second Degree Slut Shaming, Plotting while Above the Legal Limit on Matchmaking Prequel Characters, Possession of an AlphHole Hero, Romanticization of Violence, Unauthorized Use of a Psychic Power, Improper Use of Ghost Characters.

Verdict: Christie Ridgway is another author whose novels I've loved - but not this clunky and contrived conclusion to a less-than-stellar trilogy about a family winery. Nothing happens naturally in this novel. The characters don't behave like people so much as blank cogs forced to spin a certain way to power the machine of the plot. And the patronizing, manipulative, alphhole hero and stereotypical "wild slutty Italian" heroine make a terrible pair - with the hero "patiently" controlling the heroine's "urges." I sentence this novel to abstain from all alcoholic beverages for a year - especially magical plot device wine!

Verdict: I made the mistake of paying top-dollar for a hardcover edition of this novella about two protagonists rich in bad decision-making skills and poor in personality who trick their parents into letting them get married - by enacting as boring and conflictless a plot as they can. I sentence both protagonists of this novel to get personality transplants.

Verdict: Despite a strong heroine, Sanctum's hideous story concept trumped any attempt to enjoy this novel. Our heroine discovers people who commit suicide are sent to a gloomy, horrific city in the afterlife where they shuffle around getting eaten by demons or trying to kill themselves again. The novel touts the concept that suicidal people are defective and deserve to be punished for their weakness - including the hero, a guardian of this gruesome purgatory, who killed himselfwhile in Auschwitz, only to be told that his suffering didn't "earn" him a "free ticket" out of his apparently rightful punishment. Everything about the novel's concept was repugnant. I sentence this novel to Literary Hell to suffer FOREVER.

Verdict: Our heroine is a professional physicist and amateur bigot who believes she has to bone a mouth breather if she wants a baby who isn't a freaky super-genius like her. Our hero is a 36 year old football player who believes all single women over 30 are desperate and "turning brown at the edges." And they decide to procreate. How wonderful for the universe. What follows is a daisy-chain of terrible choices made by a racist intellectual elitist and a chauvinist pig. You're welcome. I sentence this novel to play professional football without a helmet.

Verdict: The only thing worse than a Rapey Romance is one that tries to be cute and fluffy while being a Rapey Romance. The sociopathic narcissist disguised as the hero engages in several "hilarious" hijinks to get the heroine to marry him - these include stalking her, assaulting her, getting her fired from her job, and abducting her to his isolated seaside rape cottage to "persuade" her to say yes. But our silly heroine keeps trying to foolishly escape! Thankfully, the novel shows us how petty and vindictive the heroine is by remaining too "focused on the past" to consent to sex.

I sentence this novel to be thrown at a wall as hard as it possibly can. And then burned in a dumpster fire.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, by Matthew Quick. YA, Contemporary. B-Pros: Explores life and death and how children are failed by parents and authority figures. Cons: Couldn't connect to hero, some pretentiousness.

Monday, December 30, 2013

Since I already told you how many books I read in 2013, now you'll want to know how many of those books kicked almighty ass - and which ones stunk to high heaven. Yesterday was all about how I did this year as a Reader. Today is all about how I did as a Reviewer. Specifically, which books blew my socks off. For my next post, I'll talk about the books that just, well, blew.

Yup, Balogh's A Christmas Bride makes a heroine of Helena, Lady Stapleton, the slutty stepmum who scared the pants off the hero of A Precious Jewel in every way but the literal one. Her unsuccessful attempts to bone her husband's emotionally-vulnerable son left her with enough baggage for a thirteen year guilt trip. Which makes her so fascinating!Balogh doesn't sugarcoat Helena's sins, nor is Helena some simpering martyr. She's still not a very nice person - but she's definitely an interesting one, and her redemptive holiday romance is a darkly spiced treat.

This novel is so good, and crammed so full of problematic elements that in normal circumstances I would despise. WTF, Gaffney? The hero rescues our abused heroine from an unfair prison sentence in order to exploit her for sex. And yet I couldn't stop reading it - and not in the "I must see how much stupider this gets" way. The author makes much of what a bad, bad boy the hero is - the better to torment him once he gets his Good Guy epiphany and realizes the woman he coerced and raped is the One for Him.

It sounds like the plot of Whitney My Love. AND YET IT'S NOT. Thanks to a bizarre, potent alchemy of breathtakingly lyrical writing, a well-realized heroine, and an intriguingly self-aware hero, this hot mess of an idea somehow works. Really, really well.

The three heroines of the first two novels in the compulsively-readable Burn for Burn trilogy are the definition of crazy-good. Sure, they might spike your drink with liquid E, or publish your Secret Emo Poetry all over school, or blow out all the lightbulbs in the gym with their latent psychic powers, but they're so sympathetic and well-realized and thought-provoking! These girls come with layers, and real problems - and so do the characters they target for vengeance. The final book, Ashes to Ashes, is due to arrive NotSoonEnough-uary 2014.

Also known as the book I'm too scared to read again. Corey Ann Haydu takes us deep into the mind of a teenager struggling with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - maybe a little too deep. It's not all about saying the same catch phrase five times or washing your hands. Sometimes it's just thinking about scary things - thinking and thinking and not being able to stop until you do something - even if that something is silly and irrational. This book will make you rethink saying, "I'm a little OCD" to explain your meticulously-organized Blu-Ray shelf.

There's nothing particularly special about the story - other than the fact that the hero, Luc, has an awesomely fierce French-Canadian supermodel mum.We have a pretty standard Angsty Aging Athlete hero paired with White Trash Con Artist Made Good Heroine. No, what lifts this novel above the other romances I read this year is the flawless execution, the refusal to rely on hoary and often sexist stereotypes (see: Supermodel Mum, and how she is not a frigid, superficial bitch), and utterly amazing writing. You can't buy me love, but you can buy this book, and you'll love it, so … um, I'm not that good at metaphors. Just read it.

Best Doorstopper Fantasy That Isn't About How an Oblivious Empowered Orphan Finds the Magical Thingee Of Indescribable Power before The Obvious Bad Guy Does

Nope, this doorstopper fantasy is all about a gang of brilliant con artists and what happens when their meticulously planned con goes horribly wrong - in an intricate and original fantasy setting. It's got disguises! It's got trickery! It's got murder and betrayal and swords named after ladies! It hits all my High Fantasy buttons (complicated politics, in-depth magical worldbuilding, high stakes adventure) without rehashing old High Fantasy formula.

Judith Ivory wins me over yet again with this beautifully written, unconventional romance that explores the concept of perception and point of view. When our heroine's husband dies, she tracks down his former ward to uncover the provenance of the box of unsavoury art her husband bequeathed to her. The hero and heroine discover they have vastly different perceptions of the heroine's husband and his immediate family. And what do their respective perceptions say about themselves? Slow-moving and thoughtful.

The author lures you in with an extremely formulaic opening set-up - a kooky but cute screwup is inexplicably hired to care for a curmudgeonly quadriplegic who's given up on life (even though he's still handsome and rich!). And then it whacks you over the head with the Reality Club and throws you down a well of Feels. Moyes demonstrates that romantic, heartfelt stories don't have to have the rough edges sanded off.

This book is just the cat's pyjamas! The duck's quack! The ocelot's clocked stockings! Despite being roughly the size of a cinderblock, this historical paranormal YA novel zips along at a frantic clip thanks to its zany, slang-spouting heroine (who is capable of accessing memories from inanimate objects), an enormous cast of interesting characters with paranormal powers, and a 1920s setting so well-realized you can hear the jazz piano and smell the cigarette smoke.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

It's that time of year again. Time to clean up the torn wrapping paper and throw away the spent bookstore gift cards and take stock of what sort of a year I had as a reader, writer, and reviewer. Since so much has happened to me this year, I decided to spare your attention spans and divide them into separate blog posts. Let's start out with how I spent my year as a Reader.

As a Reader, I finished 81 books this year (counting rereads) - slightly less than 2012's record of 90 books.

Of those 81 books:

29 were YA

28 were Romance

12 were Fantasy (including Urban Fantasy and High Fantasy)

10 were Fiction

2 were Middle Grade

Of romance novels I read:

20 were Historical

7 were Contemporary

1 was Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Of my YA novels:

15 were Contemporary

12 were Fantasy or Sci-Fi

2 were Historical (thanks, Elizabeth Wein!)

This year really surprised me - it's the first year I read another genre more than romance - it's amazing how quickly I fell into reading YA, to the point where it outstripped my romance reading (if only by one book). I've learned from my mistakes reading romance, however, and will spend 2014 diversifying the genres I read to prevent me from burning out.